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There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Persons
Christening
Find
Humors
Country
Christendom
Rank
Preservation
Observe
Court
Ceremonious
Quality
Solicitous

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Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
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Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than we find assurance and impudence, on the other hand, is often the mere effect of downright stupidity.
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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
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Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.
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Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.
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Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.
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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
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The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
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Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
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Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money.
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Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.
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A fool and his words are soon parted.
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People can commend the weather without envy.
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Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.
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Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.
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A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person. It may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love.
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Love can be founded upon Nature only.
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I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.
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The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.
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